BitSwift (SWIFT) is a decentralised, open-source cryptocurrency forked from Novacoin and launched in October 2014. It is a pure proof-of-stake (PoS) coin, with the annual PoS interest set at 3%. The project's developers plans include, among other features, seamless integration with fiat currencies which would enable worldwide money transfers at zero cost. The BitSwift cryptocurrency and its blockchain run on the BlockNet platform. Original announcement.

DistroWatch.com - BitKey

BitKey is a FREE, Debian-based live Linux distribution designed for Bitcoin users; it comes with specialist utilities to perform highly secure air-gapped Bitcoin transactions. It contains a swiss army knife of handy Bitcoin tools that support a wide range of usage models, including a few very secure ones which would otherwise be difficult to perform. The system boots into one of the three available modes: "cold-offline" - for creating a wallet and signing transactions; "cold-online" - for watching the wallet and preparing transactions; "hot-online" - standard usage but less secure as the private keys are known to the computer which is connected to the internet.

Mining difficulty is expressed as the number of attempts required to find the correct solution (and to complete a block of transactions). In Bitcoin, a block is completed (on average) every 10 minutes which, by design, is a constant number. As a result, mining difficulty is a variable that changes depending on the total processing power of the Bitcoin network and (again by design) is adjusted every two weeks. In the early days of Bitcoin and during most of 2009, the mining difficulty stood at 1. By the end of 2010 it rose to 15,000 and it passed 1 million just six months later. The largest rise in Bitcoin mining difficulty took place in 2014 when it increased from 1.3 billion to 40 billion. In contrast, the mining difficulty of Litecoin, the world's second most popular cryptocurrency, stood at just over 55,000 at the end of 2014.

Anoncoin developer "mikalv" has announced the release of Anoncoin (ANC) 0.9.7, a new version of the project's privacy-oriented cryptocurrency launched in June 2013 as a fork of Litecoin. This build brings a hard fork at block 871,111 and is a mandatory upgrade: "Today, the Anoncoin team announce the official release of Anoncoin 0.9.7. This release is set to hardfork at block 871,111, giving everyone about one week to upgrade. This is a first step on the way to the release of Anoncash later this year. We will release builds for all platforms which makes it easy for new users to install and run Anoncoin. GOST R 34.11-2012 - we fixed issues with some mined blocks not being accepted, and in the process we moved to double GOST R 34.11-2012 hashing algorithm mined with CPU/GPU. Now everyone in the Anoncoin community can mine, rather than those few who have an ASIC miner. To move over to GOST R 34.11-2012, a hard fork is needed. This will happen at block 871111, in about 1 week from now. Please make sure you have upgraded by that time. Any blocks mined from miners that have not upgraded will not be accepted after this." Here are the full release notes as published on GitHub. Unlike previous Anoncoin releases, this one is available for all major computing platforms: anoncoin-0.9.7.0-linux-x64.tar.gz (4.43MB), anoncoin-0.9.7.0-macOS.dmg (34.0MB). anoncoin-0.9.7.0-win64.zip (13.6MB). The source code is also ready: v0.9.7-gost.tar.gz (8.73MB).

Anoncoin developer "Cryptoslave" has announced the release of a new version of the Anoncoin (ANC) bundle which consists of the Anoncoin Core wallet, version 0.9.6.13 and I2Pd daemon, version 2.14.0. This bundle is presented as ANCI2Pd, version 1.0.13.0. Anoncoin is an open-source cryptocurrency, originally forked from Litecoin and launched in June 2013, with a strong focus on transaction privacy and anonymity. The new release was announced yesterday on the project's BitcoinTalk thread: "I am happy to announce the release of the new version of ANCi2pd. ANCI2Pd 1.0.13.0 - Anoncoin and I2Pd bundle. The first stand-alone cryptocurrency and C++ I2Pd router bundle featuring the latest version of Anoncoin 0.9.6.13 and i2pd 2.14.0. Easy to install, easy to use, completely anonymous by IP obfuscation. Special thanks to Orignal, R4SAS, Omen and all contributors from i2pd team and irc2p ru channel. Enjoy! To install, just execute the self-extracting file, go in the chose folder and then execute StartANCI2PdPortable.exe." See also the brief release notes for further details. The Anoncoin project releases binary software packages for Windows only; download from here: ANCI2PdPortable.exe (9.00MB). Linux and OS X users are welcome to get the source code from the project's GitHub page: 1.0.13.0.tar.gz (8.46MB, compile instructions).

Anoncoin developer "Cryptoslave" has announced the release of Anoncoin (ANC) 0.9.6.12, a new version from a cryptocurrency project which, as its names suggests, focuses on preserving privacy and anonymity while transacting in ANCs. This release comes with a fine-tuned difficulty adjustment algorithm and is a mandatory upgrade: "Anoncoin team announce the official release of the new master based on Anoncoin 0.9.6.12. Featured in this version are the following: difficulty algorithm tuned; auto-adjustment of difficulty via getblocktemplate to a low one if no block is found in 30 minutes; the difficulty is now expressed again into a positive &gt;1 number, because people and services complained of the 0-1 range; blockchain synchronization issues fix (in case no block is found for a long time because of miner exodus, mining will be allowed up to one-week old unsynchronized chain); bug because of toolchain build of protobuf solved." See the release notes for details about the changes in the difficulty adjustment algorithm. At the time of writing only a 64-bit Windows wallet client is available: anoncoin-0.9.6.12-win64-setup.exe (18.2MB). Linux and OS X users should download the source code, v0.9.6.12.tar.gz (8.43MB), and follow these instructions to build Anoncoin from source.

Anoncoin developer "Cryptoslave" has announced the release of Anoncoin (ANC) 0.9.6.11, a new stable release from a cryptocurrency project launched in June 2013 as a fork of Bitcoin and focusing on transaction anonymity. This is a first new release in 2.5 years and a mandatory upgrade: "Anoncoin team announces the official release of the new master based on Anoncoin 0.9.6.11. This new version is an obligatory update with a hardfork at block 555,555. Featured in this version are the following: upgraded to Bitcoin 0.10.99 code; many excellent improvements such as header-first synchronisation, leading to much quicker I2P synchronisation and block download; deterministic fork selection; rewritten communication protocol (I2P and Clearnet); not using IRC for synchronising peers any more; Anoncoin's test network (testnet) and regression test mode (regtest) available; new Kimoto Gravity Well v2.0...." Read the rest of the release notes for a full changelog. At the time of writing binary wallet clients are available for Windows only; download links: anoncoin-0.9.6.11-win32-setup.exe (16.3MB), anoncoin-0.9.6.11-win64-setup.exe (18.2MB). The source code is also ready: v0.9.6.11.tar.gz (8.43MB), see also how to build Anoncoin from source.